


Mea Maxima Culpa

by CatalpaWaltz



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Adultery, Cunnilingus, F/M, Face Slapping, Inconvenient 18th Century Clothing, M/M, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:54:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8020003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalpaWaltz/pseuds/CatalpaWaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hamilton is called for a late meeting at the Presidential mansion, expecting something quite different than he receives. Though no one can say that it is not what he deserves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mea Maxima Culpa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelicaschuyler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelicaschuyler/gifts).



> AN: Set in the immediate aftermath of the Reynold's Pamphlet. Timelines fiddled with (GW is still in office) but don't worry your pretty little heads too much about it. 
> 
> This was written in parallel with angelicaschuyler's far superior "Close The Door On Your Way Out" and all I can say is I have no idea why I haven't been writing this threesome for months now.

He had half-expected the summons, but it still comes as a deeply visceral shock: the crisply-folded note delivered by messenger, urging him to call at the Presidential mansion the following day, an hour after the conclusion of the weekly levee.

It's the time appointed that he finds most encouraging: the reception rooms will all be empty, the servants all sent away for the night.  It might simply have indicated that his former superior wished to ask his counsel without being harried by the demands of the rest of his schedule, but for the post-script. Beneath the lines in his commander's hand, there are five words in an entirely different, yet equally-familiar script.

_ Kindly do not be late - A.C. _

Just the juxtaposition of the two scrawls on the same leaf of paper is enough to send his heart racing. Could it be true?

Angelica had softened her conduct towards him considerably since she had arrived some weeks previous, and Hamilton could only hope that she had been receptive to his seamless posture of penitence that he has tried to maintain while at home. But he had had no previous indication that his attempts had been successful at actually inclining her towards forgiveness.

He arrives at the appointed hour, is let in through the door of the house by a liveried servant and directed into the parlor. Angelica is there, alone, sipping at a glass of port that she had likely requisitioned from one of the recently-departed senators. If the wine stains her lips (in the most alluring shade, Hamilton thinks) it is only because she allows it to. If a few curled tendrils of hair escape from her high roll to frame her face in the most pleasing fashion, it is not out of negligence.

Hamilton has learned this the hard way. With his dear sister, all is calculation. All is deliberate. All is an artifice that in some sense is no artifice at all, for nothing else could so clearly mirror the true nature of the woman.

"And our host?" Hamilton asks. "Will he not be joining us?"

Angelica raises one arched eyebrow, does not hasten to answer.

"He shall be, shortly. He suggested you might refresh yourself, if you liked."

Hamilton is already anticipating tasting the wine from her lips, which he fancies far more than sampling from a glass. But he pours himself a generous measure, if only to give his restless hands something to while they wait. He swirls the liquid around in the bottom of his glass, and thinks.

Seating himself beside her on the settee, and feeling more than a little adventurous, he leans back until their shoulders brush against each other. She does not move away, which he takes for encouragement. He gulps down the rest of his wine, lets it do its work while they wait.

"Do you know what business he is attending to?" Hamilton asks, trying and failing to mask his impatience.

"I do not. But given the nature of the office he holds, I am sure it must be of little importance," she says, voice dust-dry, glancing sidelong at him.

Duly chastened, Hamilton attempts to distract himself with a new line of conversation.

He lets his loosened tongue wander where it will: talks about how gratified he was to receive their invitation, notes that he had feared, given the "unfortunate circumstances," to lose their regard. He would never wish for them to think that anything or anyone could displace them from the exalted position  they held in his own esteem, and so on and so forth etcetera.

She responds to this only with a tight little smile, and by pouring more wine into his glass.

The minutes tick by. Hamilton relaxes enough to press the whole length of his body against her side, to let his hand drift to the folds of her gown, pinching the striped silk between thumb and forefinger, meditating on its texture. He steals one kiss, his fingertips pressed to the place where her bodice nips in at the waist, but she pushes him away after only a moment.

"We ought not begin without our host," she says primly. "That would be quite inexcusable."

Hamilton pouts, but complies.

Finally,  _ finally _ , the distant reverberations of a low voice call them towards the staircase. Hamilton would bound up the steps two at a time if propriety did not demand that he allow the lady up first.

He follows her through the door at the end of the hall, ready to finally give free rein to his eagerness...but the moment he crosses the threshold he finds himself unceremoniously pressed against the wall, one iron-strong arm (in naught but its shirtsleeves, he notices at once) held across his chest to pin him in place.

"A 'good evening' would have sufficed for a greeting," he quips, and the arm presses harder, exactly as he intended.

"Has he still not guessed?" Washington hisses, without acknowledging Hamilton. Angelica answers.

"Not at all," she says, sounding almost...disappointed. "I do not think he even suspects."

Washington lets out a long, low sigh, once that Hamilton must have heard a thousand times over the many years of their acquaintance. He knows the sound, and the look in Washington's eyes, exceedingly well. And it is only then that he realizes the terrible mistake of perception he has made.

His breath catches in his chest, his heart rate slowly begins to creep up. Washington steps away, but Hamilton dares not move.

"Sir, if I may--"

"You are not to speak in your own defense. Nor try anything else of the sort," snaps Washington. "Do you understand now why we called you here today?"

Hamilton's mouth has gone dry. It takes some effort to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

"I -- I believe so. But I should hate to find myself mistaken."

Washington lets the silence lengthen until Hamilton is practically squirming where he stands.

"You have made a grave error, Hamilton. Do you not realize it? "

"Sir, my reasons for seeking to vindicate myself as I have done --"

Washington hand moves viper-quick to the column of Hamilton's throat, not pressing, not yet, but silencing him very effectively.

"I do not speak of that. I mean the act itself. The indiscretion you declared so brazenly and thoughtlessly to the whole world."

"Have you still not reckoned the consequences?" says Angelica. And if Washington's tone had boded ill for him, it is nothing compared to the steel in her voice.

"Of course he has not," says Washington, eyes dark.

Hamilton opens his mouth, desperate to say something, to explain himself, but Washington's fingers only  _ just _ begin to squeeze, and he abandons the endeavour. It is Washington himself who speaks.

"Were we not sufficient for you? Did we not see to your needs, and support your endeavours? You had to go elsewhere?"

As he says this, Washington manhandles Hamilton away from the wall, pushes him unceremoniously towards a chair at the side of the room.

"Perhaps the rumors about him were always true," he continues. "Perhaps there are no limits to his perversity."

Hamilton shifts his weight from foot to foot, unsure what he is expected to do. It is Angelica who directs him.

"Sit," she says, gesturing towards the armchair at his back. "Try to rise from that chair and you will be bound to it."

He should leave. Not even request to go, but just walk out the door and try to pretend that he has never before been connected to them in this way. But he's already breathless with arousal, in spite of himself, and his whole being aches to obey her command.

He sits, and follows her subsequent instructions to place his hands on the arms of the chair where they might keep them in view. To complete the picture, he inclines his head in perfect, silent acquiescence. He does not even request to be allowed to remove his stocks or his coat to relieve the heat of the late summer night. A single bead of sweat trickles from his hairline into his neckcloth, but he ignores it. He is here to atone.

"You will remain there until we instruct you otherwise," says Angelica, as lightly as though she were asking him to pass the sugar at the breakfast table. And then, the moment the words are spoken, it is like an invisible curtain falls and he is no longer even present in the room. Washington and Angelica are as good as alone. Their expressions are soft, distantly fond.

"Mrs. Church, if you would?" says Washington, reaching out a hand to her and leading her to the dressing table, where she sets herself down on the stool, facing the mirror.

Washington stands behind her, far too close to pretend at propriety, his thighs brushing against the folds of her gown. She leans back, almost imperceptibly, towards the warmth of his body, lets out a long, contented sigh.

Washington's hands go to the nape of her neck. With surprising delicacy, he unties the ribbon from around her neck, sets it out on the vanity. Then he reaches for her hair, probing carefully for each of the long iron pins that hold her coif in place. He eases them out one by one, letting them fall to the floor with the dull plunk of metal on wood. She rolls her shoulders as the mass of curls tumbles down her back, and Washington wastes not a moment before burying his hands in the cascade, blunt-tipped fingers running over her scalp, making her moan.

He urges her back up on to her feet, and there is a new urgency in both their postures. His hands fall to her waist, and with one firm  _ tug _ they are pressed fully together. 

From his vantage point, Hamilton has an imperfect view of their first, undeniably passionate kiss, Angelica cupping Washington's face in her delicate hands while he captures her lips with the confidence born of much practice, his arms wrapping around her back to draw her still closer. Hamilton shifts uncomfortably in his seat, and they immediately pull away from each other to glare daggers at him, evidently ready to follow through on their previous threats.

Their patience is astonishing to him. After the first fervid embrace, Washington slows the pace to a crawl until their kisses are just a slow slide of lips over lips, tongues and teeth, long seconds where they both simply breathe from the same air. It seems like an age before he guides her towards the bed, urges her up on to the mattress.

Hamilton's gut twists to see them, to see the wonder and frank hunger in Washington's slack mouth when he looks at her, to see the way Angelica is so pliant in his hands, so much more receptive than she usually allows. And for all that Hamilton might have thought he knew them, these two great paragons of his life, he cannot detect even the beginnings of artfulness or exaggeration in their caresses. The moans that well up from Angelica's throat, the wicked gleam in Washington's eye: they are entirely genuine. The message is clear: his presence is entirely dispensable. And if they must, they will be perfectly content with each other.

For all the patience he had displayed in undressing her hair, Washington seems disinclined to struggle with the laces and pins that keep her in her gown. So she acquiesces to his direction and settles herself against the headboard while he kneels at her feet. His hands slide slowly, inexorably, up the lengths of her legs, disappearing under her skirts, the rustle of linen and silk the only sign of their steady progress. He exerts the gentlest pressure on the insides of her knees, urging them up and apart.

"If you would, Mrs. Church?" And she opens to him, the folds of her dress billowing outward like a flower unfurling. He eases her skirts up the rest of the way, and soon his face is obscured from Hamilton's sight, the only sign he has that he has reached his destination is the sudden ecstatic contortion in Angelica's features. For long, agonizing minutes his imagination has nothing to subsist on but the high, breathless sounds that pass her lips and the muffled groans and wet, obscene noises muted by her dress.

Washington emerges at last, after having brought Angelica to her crisis at least twice by Hamilton's own count, with his lips red and his mouth and chin shining. She complains about the heat, insists she is stifled in her dress, and Washington sets about the task of unwrapping her until she is bare and gleaming with a faint sheen of perspiration in the candlelight. It is possible that Hamilton yields momentarily to oblivion at this point, for when he opens his eyes next, it is Washington who is seated propped up against the finely-carved headboard while Angelica kneels over him. Without looking at him, and with that tone of voice that never failed to raise his hackles as a young man, he orders Hamilton to keep his eyes upon them, and not to turn away.

When Washington finishes, at long last, Hamilton thinks his ordeal has surely come to its conclusion. Surely, now, they would take pity on him. Surely, now, he is forgiven.

But neither make any sign to let him stir from his present prison. Even when Angelica delicately descends from the bed, and makes her slow, swaying way over to him, he stays still. He's gripping the arms of the chair so hard he fears he may soon lose sensation in his white-knuckled fingers.

To his great shock, she slides unceremoniously on to his lap, twines her arms around his neck. He feels a damp spot form and grow in the fabric of his breeches directly beneath where she sits, and he struggles heroically not to think about Washington's release slowly seeping from her, staining the fine cream-colored linen.

"I have done as you asked," says Hamilton, keeping himself perfect, painfully still. "I have done all you asked. Have I earned my reward?" he asks, with a ghost of what he has been told is his most winning smile.

She does not even give him time to recognize his error before the loud crack of her hand impacting his cheek resounds through the room.

Hamilton blinks back his shock, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and tries to ignore the fact that his arousal has not abated in the least. Angelica glances down at the bulge in his breeches and looks up again with a sneer.

"Yes, you would enjoy that, I imagine. Of course you would."

"What may I say?" he asks at last, his voice hoarse, desperate. "What can I say to earn your forgiveness?"

She draws back a little, looks him square in the eye, their faces level.

"Are you not the one with ready words for any occasion? Can you not now conjure some for this one?"

Hamilton has no response. Without further ceremony, Angelica returns to the bed, and Washington gets her back into her chemise and stays, then kneels to place her slippers back on her feet. They leave him alone in the guest chamber without another word.

Eyes closed, jaw clenched, Hamilton brings his hands to the buttons of his falls.

  
  
  



End file.
